


Fibonacci

by siderealSandman



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Childhood Friends, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 06:29:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8193713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siderealSandman/pseuds/siderealSandman
Summary: In another time, in another place, another redhead befriends the mayor's daughter. An almost perfect friendship, save for the unfortunate complications of feelings.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Squabbler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squabbler/gifts).



5-8-13- **(15)** -21

 

“Is that _anime_?”

 

Blinking, the redheaded five year old glanced up at the voice from behind him, flinching a little under her intense, blue eyes.

 

“I-I don’t think so?” Nathanael stammered, glancing down at the simple sketch of a flock of pigeons feeding on the scraps of graham crackers littering the black top.

 

“It _looks_ like anime,” the blonde girl sniffed, folding her arms across her chest as she looked suspiciously down at the sketchbook. “Mummy doesn’t like me watching it, but Adrien always has it on at his house so I must’ve seen a hundred episodes of that Moon Sailor show in little bits and pieces, so I know anime when I see it.”

 

Nathanael blinked, not quite sure what to say as the girl plunked down on the bench beside him, leaning over his shoulder with the same determined frown on her face.

 

“So do you _only_ draw birds?” The girl asked, peeling up a page of his sketchbook to sneak a peek at some of the other pages.

 

“H-Hey!” Nathanael said, pulling back a little and clutching the sketchbook to his chest.

 

“Oh, _come on_ , it’s not like you’re drawing anything bad, right?” The girl said, nose wrinkling a little. “Unless you like to draw… _butts_ or something?”

 

Nathanael’s face flushed as red as his hair. “I-I’m not drawing butts!”

 

“Then show me what else you drew,” the girl insisted, reaching over and snagging the notebook from his grasp.

 

“Hey!” Nathanael said, reaching over to take it back only to be stopped by a palm to his face as the girl paged through his stuff. “G-Give it!”

 

“I don’t know _why_ you’re so upset,” Chloe sniffed, eyes lingering on a pencil sketch of a giraffe for a moment. “If you sucked, that’d be one thing, but you _don’t_ so I don’t understand what the big deal is.”

 

The girl huffed, tossing Nathanael back his sketchbook as she got to her feet. “I…th-thanks?”

 

“Just telling it like it is,” the girl shrugged, smoothing out her dress and heading towards the classrooms and scattering the pigeons as she jumped in the center of the flock. For a moment, the vision of the girl in the yellow cardigan, surrounded by birds in mid stride seemed frozen in the young boy’s mind for a brief, fleeting moment…and then he returned to his sketches, quietly ignoring the warm feeling of praise welling up inside him.

 

* * *

 

After recess, the teacher introduced Chloe Bourgeois for the first time to all but one of her students.

* * *

 

“Art _sucks_.”

 

A bold statement, but then again Nathanael had learned to expect nothing less from Chloe “Bold Statements” Bourgeois in the three years he had known her. This latest proclamation came hot on the heels of a still-life drawing that looked more like a series of blotches on paper than a bowl of fruit.

 

“Art doesn’t _suck_ ,” Nathanael said softly, placing finishing the banana as Chloe plucked the apple from the basket and started eating it.

 

“Either _art sucks_ or _I suck at art_ and since I’m _totally awesome at most things,_ art must _suck_ ,” Chloe concluded, wrinkling her nose at the mess she made on the canvas. “Why’d you make me take this _stupid_ elective?”

 

“…I didn’t?” Nathanael said, leaning back with a small smile. “You know…if you just spent a little more time working on the outline-”

 

Chloe responded to this stirring criticism by blowing a wet raspberry and spraying her canvas with soggy apple chunks.

 

“…I guess that’s one way to add texture,” Nathanael laughed softly.

 

“Seriously, what’s your secret?” Chloe asked, slipping her apple core into Ivan’s backpack. “There’s got to be a shortcut to painting apples, right?”

 

“Practice?”

 

“Ew,” Chloe huffed, folding her arms and kicking her legs idly back and forth as she stared at Nathanael’s painting with something resembling envy. “Whatever; not like I need to be good at art anyway.”

 

“Plan on being good at science and stuff?” Nathanael asked.

 

“No; I’m just gonna marry someone with lots of dough and pay people to paint portraits of me eating fruit and riding horses,” Chloe said, folding her arms with a smug look on her face. “Maybe if you’re lucky, you can be one of the artists hired to immortalize my beauty!”

 

“I should probably start practicing then,” Nathanael chuckled, before halting and blushing as Chloe looked at him with a raised brow.

 

“…maybe you should.”

 

* * *

 

The first picture is a scribbling mess, largely because for some reason his hands shake when he draws her.

 

By ten, his lines have gotten clearer, etching the new contours of her face in charcoal, pencil, and paint.

 

By twelve, he can draw her without even looking at her, hands moving automatically across the page until her painted blue eyes look back at him, always carrying a glinting hint of challenge.

 

 _You can do better than that,_ her portraits seem to say to him.

 

* * *

 

Chloe demands every one of his drawings of her, paying his commissions with pastries from the new bakery that opened down the street ( _“Mummy always buys me too many of them, and I can’t eat them all, so you might as well take one.”)._ She fills a small box under her bed with scribbles, sketches, and more polished pieces that reflect hours and hours of practice.

 

Even the blotchy, early scribbles she finds beautiful (they’re of _her_ ; how can they _not_ be?). Even as they grow more refined, more professional looking with time, she accredits it to the subject rather than the artist…at least until her thirteenth birthday.

 

* * *

 

“I’m starting to think I should have gone with the handbag,” Nathanael sighed, rolling his neck as he dips his brush in the can of yellow paint again.

 

“Who’s the birthday girl here?” Chloe grunted through an exaggerated smile, bundles of sunflowers in her arms as she looked off dreamily into the distance. “Less chatter, more painting; I have an itch on my nose that’s been killing me all morning.”

 

“Oh…you could have stopped posing an hour ago,” Nathanael said, smiling as Chloe squawked and nearly fell off the window seat. “I’m just putting some finishing touches on it now.”

 

“ _Jerk_ ,” Chloe huffed, lobbing the sunflowers out the window behind her and furiously scrubbing her nose. “You could have _said_ something!”

 

“I thought you knew,” Nathanael said, washing his brushes off as he leaned back with a small sigh. “Not like this is the first time you’ve sat for me, is it?”

 

“First time I’ve sat this _long_ ,” Chloe said, rubbing her backside as she stepped around the side of the canvas. “Let me see how it l-”

 

Chloe trailed off, eyes widening as they fell on the canvas, genuinely stunned for a moment as she took in the sight before her. It was a simple image of her staring out the window, a wistful smile playing on her face rather than the exaggerated grimace she had been holding for what felt like eternity. The sunflowers rested in her arms, pressed against the white sundress that fell down to her ankles tucked up beneath her. The light streamed through her parlor window onto her face, lighting it up in a way it had never been lit up before, and everything about her seemed to glow.

 

Chloe had liked the sketches he did of her before; this was the first picture he ever drew that made her think that art _maybe_ wasn’t as stupid as she thought it was.

 

“Did I do okay?” Nathanael asked, the small smile drawing her attention to his lips.

 

* * *

 

“Artists don’t make all that much money, you know.”

 

Nathanael paused, soft-serve halfway from the cup to his mouth as he looked up at a pensive looking Chloe, chewing on the rim of her plastic spoon as she regarded him thoughtfully.

 

“Some do,” Nathanael shrugged. “Animators, game designers, tattoo artists-”

 

“ _Real_ artists, I mean,” Chloe said, waving her hands. “Portrait artists or landscape artists; they always die penniless and unappreciated by the art community who turns around and worships them after they croak.”

 

“The art community are jerks; no surprises there,” Nathanael snorted, failing to notice how blue eyes followed the dollop of cold pineapple soft-serve as it melted on his tongue. “Why are you bringing it up?”

 

“Maybe I don’t want you to die penniless and unappreciated,” Chloe shrugged.

 

“No worry of that so long as my _wealthy_ patrons keep commissioning me with ice-cream,” Nathanael chuckled, leaning back on the park bench to get a better look at her. “If nothing else, I won’t starve…and at least you appreciate my work, right?”

 

Chloe pursed her lips with a noncommittal sniff, avoiding his curious gaze before she decided if she wanted find out what pineapple soft-serve tasted like on his lips.

 

* * *

 

“That Nathanael seems like a nice boy,” her mother said offhandedly as they wound through the city streets towards the Agreste manor.

 

“…I guess,” Chloe said offhandedly after a moment, ears warming ever so slightly.

 

Her mother’s eyes lingered on her daughter’s reflection in the rearview mirror for a moment, before turning back to the road. “Adrien’s a nice boy too.”

 

“I _guess_ ,” Chloe sighed. Her mother wasn’t wrong; Adrien was nothing _but_ nice. Nice, talented, a chip off Gabriel’s block without any of his father’s snobbish coldness. Their mothers had been friends since they were babies; no doubt her own mother wanted to make the almost familial relationship legal in the future.

 

But for some reason, Chloe simply couldn’t see Adrien as anything more than Adrien “Watches Too Much Anime” Agreste. Her nights were spent, instead, poring over the scraps of paper she stowed under her bed, looking for some clue in the brushstrokes that would give her suspicions proof. She was waiting for something in his drawings to reach out, talk to her, prove something to her.

 

All the while, her birthday portrait looked down on her from the wall, a secretive smile hiding something she couldn’t quite figure out…

 

* * *

 

When she was fourteen, Chloe met the girl she would spend the rest of her high-school career hating.

 

Marinette practically glowed, cheerfully smiling and waving at everyone as their teacher introduced her. Chloe didn’t fail to notice how all eyes seemed to be drawn to her as she traipsed down the aisle, sliding next to Nathanael with a soft hello and extended hand.

 

She smiled with a soft hello that draws heat to Nathanael’s cheeks, and Chloe saw red.

 

* * *

 

Chloe never cursed the faithlessness of boys as much as she cursed it in the months her friend spent enthralled with the new girl’s easy charm.

 

At the same time, she cursed herself for being envious of someone who managed to make Nathanael as red-faced and stutter like he did when they were younger.

 

* * *

 

“Bit creepy, don’t you think?”

 

Chloe was almost wounded by the way Nathanael pressed his sketchbook flat against his chest, cutting her off from a portion of his life he hadn’t excluded her from since they were kids. His efforts were in vain; Chloe caught a glimpse of the unmistakably dark-haired young woman beaming up from the page as Nathanael idly doodled as though she didn’t exist.

 

“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nathanael said, tucking his sketchbook back into his bag before Chloe could get her hands on it.

 

“Please; you’ve been staring at Marinette like you—” _(Used to stare at me)_ “—want to paint her naked, feeding candy to baby angels on the ceiling of a church,” Chloe said, lip curling a little as Nathanael turned purple at the mention of a naked Marinette. “Does she know she haunts the pages of your sketchbook?”

 

“No,” Nathanael muttered. “You can’t tell her either.”

 

“I _could_ ,” Chloe said, relishing the color leaving Nathanael’s face. “I won’t, though; I just don’t see why she’s suddenly your new muse.”

 

“I…sh-she’s nice,” Nathanael muttered.

 

“ _I’m_ nice,” Chloe responded, bristling as Nathanael snorted. “Excuse me?”

 

“You called Miss Bustier a “shrill fury from the pits of hell” because she gave us homework over the weekend,” Nathanael said dryly.

 

“I was trying to be _nice_ and get us out of some _homework_ ,” Chloe insisted, rising from the bench with a huff. “You know what? Draw whoever you want; I don’t care.”

 

“Are you okay?” Nathanael asked, standing up to follow her.

 

“Peachy,” Chloe sniffed, waving over her shoulder as she stomped towards the classroom. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

 

Nathanael almost followed her; almost demanded that she tell him what was wrong. He regretted that _almost_ for years to come.

 

* * *

 

Two weeks later, Adrien Agreste came to school as a madman threatened the city.

 

* * *

 

 

Any hope Chloe had of enflaming jealousy in Nathanael fizzled out as her overblown displays of affection were lost on the boy. As much as she wasn’t interested in Adrien herself, she relished both the opportunity to frustrate Marinette’s ambitions (the girl couldn’t have _everything_ she wanted) and irritate Nathanael, who had been awfully quiet since she caught him doodling Marinette. There was an unspoken coil of tension between them now, waiting for the worst possible moment to snap.

 

And snap it did, as Nathanael tripped, exposing his sketchbook to everyone in Ms. Mendeleiev’s laboratory on his fifteenth birthday.

 

Chloe watched it happen in almost slow motion, weeks of simmering frustration and resentment at her ~~crush~~ friend welling up inside her into a perfect moment of pure pettiness.

 

“Aw, looks like someone has a _crush_ on you, Marinette,” Chloe sneered. Nathanael turned, anger and hurt etched across his face only to meet a resolutely glaring Chloe, jaw clenched hard enough to stop her lips from quivering. For a moment, she almost runs after him; almost apologizes.

 

And she regretted that _almost_ for a _very_ long time.

 

* * *

 

 

You know how the rest of the story goes; cowardly, manipulative super-villain brainwashes teenager into doing his bidding. Humiliated, frustrated teenage akuma turns on his formerly best friend as his “date” with Marinette goes poorly. Heroes save the day, everyone goes home happy.

 

More or less.

 

* * *

 

“I had no idea you _hated_ me so much.”

 

Chloe’s offhand remark stopped Nathanael in the hall, his hand tightening around his backpack strap. He wanted to tell her that he had no idea how he got to her apartment; that all he remembered was a low, rumbling voice in his ear before the world went dark.

 

Instead, he said, “you said you wouldn’t tell her.”

 

Chloe paused for a moment, not looking at the boy over her shoulder before turning to talk away, flats clicking on the hallway tiles as she left him standing there, alone with his thoughts.

 

* * *

 

That night, through a veil of angry tears, she watched almost ten years of artwork go up in smoke, her painted face melting as the flames rose higher and higher into the night sky.

 

...it’s another six years before they speak again.

 

* * *

 

“You cut your hair.”

 

The voice behind her startled her only slightly; to tell the truth, she had been anticipating this moment since she caught the shock of signature dark red hair sitting just across the aisle from her. It couldn’t be anyone other than him; no one else on God’s earth had hair that color. She had sat through the garish garden ceremony, silently wondering what to say to him once the reception started.

 

“I like it better this way,” Chloe sniffed, eyes trained on the newlyweds slowly revolving to some tired jazz number. “I seem to remember someone had a habit of yanking my ponytail in preschool so I figured I’d protect myself from any more sneak attacks.”

 

“That was _Kim_ who kept yanking on your ponytail,” Nathanael chuckled, leaning against one of the faux-marble columns dotting the lawn.

 

“Yeah, and he’s been moping by the punch-bowl all night,” Chloe said, running her hands through her pixie cut as she finally glanced in Nathanael’s direction. In true, hipster, art-school trash fashion, he was decked out in a dark purple shirt rolled up to his elbows, black tie hanging loosely from his neck. His hair, no longer limiting his peripheral vision, was pulled back into a ponytail that hung loosely down to his shoulders. Gone was the runny nosed little boy who had sketched her reclining on the slide like a model on the grand piano; gone was too was the gangly teenager who so easily replaced her sketches with a much softer, dark haired girl who was currently swaying in the arms of her new husband.

 

“I’m surprised you got invited,” Chloe said, glancing back over towards the dance floor.

 

“I could say the same about you,” Nathanael snorted, taking a sip of his punch. “I didn’t think the blushing bride was your biggest fan.”

 

“The blushing bride isn’t the only one who sent out invitations,” Chloe said coolly, turning her gaze away from the dancing couple. “I take it your invitation wasn’t from the groom, was it?”

 

“You sound surprised,” Nathanael said, turning to face her with his back to the column.

 

“I am,” Chloe said, looking him over. “I didn’t think Marinette wanted her former paramours at her wedding.”

 

“We weren’t _paramours_ ,” Nathanael laughed.

 

“Oh, that’s _right_ ,” Chloe said, feigning surprise with a hand covering her mouth. “I nearly forgot; you never went out with her, did you?”

 

“No, I didn’t,” Nathanael snorted, shaking his head. “Is that supposed to make me feel bad?”

 

“I don’t particularly care how you feel,” Chloe sighed, feigning indifference as best she could despite every nerve in her body demanding that she do _something_ ; anything other than sniping her middle school crush. It wasn’t as though she was a stranger to unrequited affections—not that she ever gave them a chance to requite them in the first place.

 

“And yet, here you are talking to me,” Nathanael pointed out.

 

“Don’t confuse small talk for interest,” Chloe snickered, forcing herself to look at Nathanael. If she could just look at him long enough, she reasoned, any lingering sway he had over her might evaporate. As it was, her attention was drawn to the nape of his neck exposed by his open collar and the hint of a watercolor tattoo peeking out behind the purple silk. Chloe had quietly suspected her taste in men wasn’t as refined as she pretended it was, but apparently all it took to peak her interest was premium art-school scruff.

 

“If you’re really not interested, I can always let you get back to…whatever it was you were doing before I showed up,” Nathanael sighed, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear.

 

“No, by all means,” Chloe said, crossing her arms. “If you have something to say to me, get it out; god knows you must’ve been bottling it up for, what, four years now?”

 

Nathanael paused, narrowing his eyes at her for a long moment as he apparently tried to find the right words to say. He wanted to apologize for so many things; not talking to her, not calling her, not even saying goodbye to her before leaving for school in America. “I’m-”

 

“Don’t say you’re sorry,” Chloe said, narrowing her eyes at him. “That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it? Well that’s _stupid_.” Chloe shook her head, taking a long sip of punch with a small grimace. “Not your fault Adrien’s bastard father decided to go all Megamind on everyone.”

 

“That’s…not what I wanted to apologize for,” Nathanael said, surprising Chloe a little as he shifted from foot to foot in a way that made him look thirteen years younger. Part of her had missed the stammering insecurity that had endeared her to him as children; most of her was glad to see it gone, replaced with something resembling confidence that she was more than happy to take credit for.

 

“I’m…sorry for everything that happened after that,” Nathanael said, scratching the back of his neck. “I’m sorry we stopped talking…I know that wasn’t all my fault-”

 

“It _totally_ was,” Chloe mumbled.

 

“-but I didn’t help any, did I?” Nathanael chuckled helplessly. “…I kinda missed you, you know?”

 

It was as though her lonely adolescent fantasies were being brought to life; the tearful reconciliation between them she had idly fantasized about now and then played out nothing like her seventeen year old self imagined it would. For one thing, there were no tears; not even happy ones.

 

Just two adults, who had once been children, who had once been very dear friends.

 

Chloe’s silence must’ve been mistaken for dismissal, because Nathanael looked embarrassed, a little disappointed as he turned to leave. “That’s, uh…all I wanted to say,” he said. “I’ll let you get back to-”

 

“I destroyed all your pictures,” Chloe said, standing up to go after him as he turned around, blinking owlishly. “Lit them up and watched them burn…every single one of them.”

 

Nathanael looked down with a shrug that said ‘fair enough’ as he waited for her to finish.

 

“…so there’s definitely a shortage of portraits of _me_ in the world,” Chloe said, feeling the back of her neck heat up as she took another step towards him. “I’ll…consider forgiving you if you do something to rectify that.”

 

Nathanael blinked as she pursed her lips together, squinting at her for a long moment before bursting out into laughter, a steady stream of chuckles shaking his skinny frame.

 

“Don’t _laugh_ at me, you jerk!” Chloe said, bouncing her empty punch cup off his chest. “I’m being serious! And I want it in oil this time! Life sized! _At least!_ ”

 

“Fine fine,” Nathanael said, holding his hands up. “I’ll pay my dues in blood, sweat, and oil if it’ll get you to speak to me again.”

 

“It _might_ ,” Chloe said, smile threatening her surly exterior. “I’ll have to see if you’ve gotten skilled enough to warrant my forgiveness.”

 

“I’ll make sure to give it my all then,” Nathanael said, sighing as though releasing a breath he had held for years. “Anything else?”

 

Chloe furrowed her brow for a moment as an old idea struck her. “Pineapple sorbet.”

 

“…pardon?” Nathanael asked.

 

“You need to eat some pineapple sorbet,” Chloe said, nodding towards the dance floor with a furtive smile. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to try since I was thirteen…”

 

* * *

 

Chloe decides that pineapple sorbet is disgusting, save for when it is eaten lukewarm and melting off someone's lips.

 


End file.
